The Death Masks (click here to be taken back to our collections webpage)
Image © Charles Hastings Education Centre
The death mask of the microcephalic man on display in the George Marshall Medical Museum.
The Museum holds 10 death masks of prisoners executed by hanging in Worcester's gaol in the early 19th Century. At the time, this was attached to the old hospital in Castle Street via an underground tunnel. These death masks were found in the basement of the Castle Street Worcester Royal Infirmary in the 1930s by George Marshall. The bodies of hanged criminals were taken from the gaol under the road to Castle Street to be used for dissection and examination (as only criminals' bodies were allowed to be dissected in the UK at this point).
Recently, archaeologists have uncovered a section of the tunnel on the Castle Street site and, rather gruesomely, the first 'find' in the tunnel was a human tooth! The University of Worcester have also found dissected human remains on the Infirmary site. Click here to view the BBC's online article.
These casts were made in order to study the characteristics of the criminals' personalities using physiognomy (shape and size of the head) and phrenology (study of the site of different abilities on the head). This was thought to be useful in predicting criminal behaviour. These practices didn't last very long in the medical profession, though traces of these ideas clearly still remain in public psyches when we talk of close-together eyes indicating an untrustworthy character, or a large, meaty head implying a thuggish nature! Victorian literature is full of references with regards these ideas.
The only head we know much about is that of a microcephalic individual who was hanged for sheep stealing (see image above). This individual would have been severely disabled and, because of the specific nature of microcephaly, would not have had the mental capacity to understand right and wrong. There is also a possibility that he was framed for this crime, but we will never know.